Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle with Voice Download and Review

Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle is another great adventure game from Lucasarts. It was originally released in 1993, during the golden era of graphics adventure games. Day of the Tentacle is the sequel to Maniac Mansion, and is set on 5 years after Maniac Mansion.



The premise of Day of the Tentacle itself is interesting enough to keep us going. The three main characters, Bernard Bernoulli, Laverne and Hoagie, are called by Green Tantacle, to help Dr. Fred Edison using a time machine to prevent Purple Tentacle from taking over the world.



Purple Tentacle is the friend of Green Tentacle, who become mad after ingesting some toxic waste. The toxic waste made Purple Tentacle acquires power and intelligence, and is on its way for global domination.



Dr. Fred decided to send the team one day earlier to prevent Purple Tentacle from taking the toxic waste using his time machines. But something happen during the time travel, which send Bernard back to the current time, while Hoagie is sent to 200 years in the past and Laverne is sent to 200 years in the future.



The interesting part in the game is, we have to guide them to solve puzzle together in three different time. History play a significant role in Day of the Tentacle. What we did in the past will change things in the future. And we need to use this effect to help them solve puzzles.



In Day of the Tentacle, we can meet several several figures from colonial America, like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock and Betsy Ross. Some of the puzzles involve these characters. For example, in one sequence, Hoagie must coax Washington into chopping down a kumquat tree, a real fun one.



In conclusion, Day of the Tentacle is very very interesting adventure game. The graphics style in very unique. The backgrounds are drawn in a weird proportion, but they just look nice. The voice acting is superb, as well as the storyline. The puzzles are quite hard to solve, slightly harder than Monkey Island in my opinion.



You can download Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle here. You will need ScummVM to run the game.

Sam & Max Hit the Road with Voice Download & Review

Sam & Max Hit the Road is a graphic adventure computer game released by LucasArts in 1993. The game is based on the comic characters of Sam and Max, a dog and a rabbit. The characters, created by Steve Purcell, originally debuted in a 1987 comic book series. Sam and Max Hit the Road is one of the best adventure game from Lucasarts. Its humor, voice acting, graphics, music and gameplay are just superb!




As with other adventure games by Lucasarts in the same time, Sam & Max Hit the Road uses the user-friendly point-and-click system. As usual, there is an inventory system to keep the things we collect for later uses.As with other LucasArts games, we will not die in Sam & Max Hit the Road.



When the game start, Sam and Max receive a telephone call from an unseen and unheard Commissioner, who tells them to go to a nearby carnival. At the carnival, they are told by the owners that their star attraction, a frozen bigfoot called Bruno, has been set free and fled taking their second attraction, Trixie the Giraffe-Necked Girl. Sam and Max set off to find Bruno and Trixie and bring them back. As the duo investigate the carnival, they learn that Bruno and Trixie are in love and that Trixie freed Bruno. Sam & Max leave the carnival to pursue leads at various tourist traps throughout the country, such as The World's Largest Ball of Twine, a vortex controlled by giant subterranean magnets and bungee jumping facilities at Mount Rushmore.



The pair learn that two other bigfoots used as tourist attractions in other parts of the country have been freed by Bruno, and that Bruno has been captured by Liverpudlian country western singer Conroy Bumpus, a cruel animal abuser who wishes to use Bruno in his performances. Sam and Max travel to Bumpus' home and rescue Bruno and Trixie, but Bruno then departs with Trixie to join a bigfoot gathering at an inn in Nevada.



Following them, Sam and Max are forced to disguise themselves as a bigfoot to enter the party. Eventually the party is gatecrashed by Conroy Bumpus and his henchman Lee Harvey, who hope to capture the bigfoots. However, Sam manages to fool Bumpus and Harvey into donning their bigfoot disguise, and Max locks them in the inn's kitchen freezer.



Chief Vanuatu, leader of the bigfoots, in recognition of the pair's actions, makes the Freelance Police members of the bigfoot tribe and tells them of a spell that will make the world safe for bigfoots again, preventing their capture by humans. However, the chief requires help deciphering the spell's four ingredients, and asks for Sam and Max's help. Eventually, they discover that the ingredients are a vegetable resembling John Muir, hair restoration tonic, the tooth of a dinosaur and a vortex contained within a snow globe. Combined with a live bigfoot sacrifice—which Max substitutes for frozen bigfoot-clad Bumpus and Harvey—the ingredients cause large trees to spring into existence, destroying towns and cities and covering the bulk of the west United States in forest.



Content that their work is done, Sam and Max take the frozen ice block containing Bumpus and Harvey to the carnival. Believing that Bruno has been returned to them, the owners give a large reward of skee ball tickets to the Freelance Police, who then spend the end credits shooting targets at a carnival stall with real firearms.



In conclusion, Sam & Max Hit the Road is an adventure game that you cannot miss.

You can download Sam & Max Hit the Road here. You will need ScummVM to run the game.

Skunny Download and Review

Skunny was developed by Magic Touch Production in 1995. It is a side scrolling platform game that is pretty similar to popular the Sonic the Hedgehog and Jazz Rabbit.



The game start when Skunny, in his recent adventure, he uncovered an ancient map showing the location of incredible treasures scattered throughout remote parts of the world. We will guide Skunny through areas filled with monsters and obstacles to gather treasures.



Like Jazz Rabbit, Skunny offer a good 256-color VGA graphics and digitized sound. The game play is fast, but obviously the game engine is not as good as Jazz Rabbit, as we can notice some slight jerk when moving around.



Game play wise, Skunny is as good as Sonic and Jazz Rabbit. We can run pretty fast, and the best is when we jump into the barrels that will throw Skunny from place to place.



The monsters and obstacles in Skunny is pretty simple to overcome compared to other platform games. As we can move pretty free in a level, finding the way to the next level is quite troublesome.



You can download Skunny here.

Godaddy is Down For 6 Hours

The web hosting service I use to host my files, Godaddy has gone down for almost six hours for unknown reason. I cannot even access their homepage during the down time.

The service is resumed now, hopefully there won't be next time.

Romance of the Three Kingdom III: Dragon of Destiny Download and Review

Romance of the Three Kingdom III: Dragon of Destiny was released in 1992 by Koei. It is the third installment of the long running turn-based strategy game Romance of the Three Kingdom series.



Romance of the Three Kingdom III follows the same formula of the previous installments. We start by choosing a scenario and the leader that we want to play. Of course, all the famous leaders are there, like Liu Bei, Cao Cao and Sun Quan.



Compared to Romance of the Three Kingdom 2, the graphics has been hugely upgraded. The world map is no longer shown in top down colored territory view. Instead, the map is shown in a more realistic map with rectangle represent the cities while lines represent roads that connect the cities.



It is a bit confusing at the beginning, but we will get used to it after we play the game for a short while. There is still an option for us to view the territories is color mode, but it is only meant for viewing, we cannot play using this view.



As Romance of the Three Kingdom III uses 640x480 16-color VGA mode instead of 16-color EGA mode, the graphics improvement is obvious. Although Koei is famous for bringing 16-color graphics to life, but somehow the graphics of ROTK III is not as good as their other games like Genghis Khan II.



The battle system of ROTK III is also quite different from ROTK II. The battle mode is now shown in 3D isometric view, rather than the 2D view of ROTK II.



Romance of the Three Kingdom III is not a simple game. You must invest time to learn all aspects of the game before you can appreciate the depth of the game. I've included the manual in the download, hope it might help in your conquest.

You can download Romance of the Three Kingdom III: Dragon of Destiny here.

Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk Download and Review

Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk is a platform game published by Codemasters in 1991. It was the sixth game in the Dizzy adventure series.



In Prince of the Yolkfolk, Rockwart the Troll has cast a spell on Daisy, leaving her asleep for 100 years. Dizzy need to start off his adventure again to rescue Daisy.



We start the game trapped underground, and find our ways to find Daisy in a castle. There are stars to collect along the way, as well as food to replenish energy lost in contact with the many hazards. Succeed and Dizzy and Daisy will ride off into the sunset together.



Prince of the Yolkfolk is not a straight forward game. Often we need to collect the right items and put them on the right place to solve some puzzles to continue.



Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk is quite a nice game that you should give it a try. You can download Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk here.

Air Strike USA Download and Review

Air Strike USA was developed by Digital Integration and released by Spotlight Software in 1990. It is a fast-paced arcade style simulation game.



In Air Stirke USA, we will fly the ATF (Advanced Tactical Fighter) on various missions around the world.



Missions include destroying enemy submarines, radars, aircrafts, bases etc. In the game, instead of viewing the cockpit, we will watch our ATF from behind with an very simplified instrument panel at the bottom of the screen.



Overall, Air Strike USA is a flight simulator that don't need too much thinking to play. If you like arcade and shoot'em up, this is a game for you.



You can download Air Strike USA here.

Links: The Challenge of Golf Download and Review

Links: The Challenge of Golf is a golf simulation game developed by Access Software released in 1990. Links: The Challenge of Gold is the first is the long lasting Links series, which was later released by Microsoft Game Studios after Microsoft acquired Access Software.



Similar to other Access games, Links comes with superb VGA graphics and Realsound technology. With Realsound technology, we can hear the digitized sound effect using only PC speaker.



Links: The Challenge of Golf is a very realistic golf simulation game. Various details in golf are taken care nicely.



Like the real golf, we need concentration in order to win the game. But instead of focus on the ball, we need to click exactly on the timeslice to be able to make a best shot.



You can download Links: The Challenge of Golf here.

Fantastic Dizzy Download and Review

Fantastic Dizzy (a.k.a. The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy) is a platform game released by Codemasters in 1991. The game was awarded the 'NES Adventure Game of the Year 1991' by Game Players Magazine and given the coveted 'Parents Choice Award'.



The story of Fantastic Dizzy happens when his girlfriend Daisy has been captured by the evil wizard Zaks. Dizzy has to leave his Yolkfolk's treehouse and start his adventure in getting back his girlfriend.



Fantastic Dizzy follows the same pattern of other platform games like Mario Bros and Jazz Rabbit, where we need to go through a few levels, collecting items, avoiding being killed by monsters and reach the next level.



Technically, the graphics and music of Fantastic Dizzy is quite good. The multi-layer backdrop with day and night scene is quite unique too. The sales of 125,000 copies should give us some indication of its reception.



You can download Fantastic Dizzy here.

Action Fighter Download and Review

Action Fighter is an overhead vehicular shoot'em up released by Sega in 1986. It mimics the style of other games such as Spy Hunter and Traverse USA.



In Action Fighter, we begin the game riding a superbike. In subsequent levels a sports car, a jetski, a helicopter and even a Formula 1 racing car can all be driven.



All of the vehicles are fully armed to deal with enemy vehicles and gun emplacements intent on stopping the player's progress.



Action Fighter is quite hard to play thought. The key combination is weird. Instead of using arrow keys, we need to use Z, X, O and K to move around.



You can download Action Fighter here.